Homebrew: "Wheat Wacker" Dandelion hopped Sorghum Wheat Beer

Recently, as the dandelions showed up in mid May, I picked a good amount and made a tea, adding some lemon juice to create a high acid environment to avoid spoil so it would last long enough to hop the  Sorghum Wheat beer I was putting together, which I've ended up calling "Wheat Wacker".

Dandelions and sorghum are unloved, and wheat is kind of getting a lot of bad press lately too, even if it's the staff of life.  So this is brew made of  largely unloved things albeit with very big, bold, unique flavor.    I love this stuff and so have all my informal samplers so far, who are not the type to pull punches if a batch tastes like shit.

So here's what I put together-- Sorghum syrups, honey, malted Wheat extract from Northern Brewer, and Danstar's epic and always, Nottingham yeast (no, they are not paying for this blog post... yet).

I had to move fast, because these dandelion flowers turn quick, even in lemon juice, and in fact, I lost a few bowls before capturing this one for the bottle.

Don't get the wrong idea-- hops were added (high alpha Chinook), albetit in small doses, to merely taint the batch like a noble hop.

The result was outstanding-- "tasty, delicious and amazing", if you will (please don't).

So , yadda yadda-- boil about 1.5 gallons of sweet syrups and 1 pound of dextrose for 30 minutes, add Chinook leaf and dandelions at the last 5 minutes of boil for aromas, beging cooling with colder waters to 5 gallons, and measure for levels.   There is no Heather in this batch, even though there is a bag of it in the background.

(My impression right now is that Dandelions makes and even better adjunct than heather-- #sorrynotsorry you Highlanders).

It was my goal and was also predicted by my bouncing hydrometer to be a low gravity beer-- under 3%, until I started honey, and it read more like 4.8%, which is not my idea of an ideal summer beer.

My next batch is certainly going to be a super low ABV Kvass.

So we added yeast, easy peasey, lemon dandelion squeezey... and it fermented very very well for 7 days.  Bubbles fuming out of the airlock-- so my impression is that sorghum is well loved by Nottingham yeast.  And the flavor of the wort was very good-- unlike the mixed reviews I've been getting about sorghum for a year or two from other #Homebrew devotees.  This is a photo of the transfer for dry hopping with more dandelions and some Chinook leaf.

And after letting the dry dandelion hop situation sit for another 10 days, it turned out fantastic.

Big Big surprise.  My best batch of beer since Dunkelweizen Guy in winter.



I bottled a lot of it in quarts and wine bottles because I'm mostly filled up with other brew adventures since Jan.

Footnote:

New Glass for Stouts:

You'll have to turn your screen because I don't want to edit photos right now, but this new glass is worth a look if you drink the Stouts.